Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with my own little butta-cup, El Guapo, who managed to find himself at an early screening of BEERFEST, the new comedy from the Broken Lizard team. I heard the invisible man and a singing bush lead him to the information on Broken Lizard's website. Anyway, he seemed to really enjoy himself. I see this flick real soon myownself and, being a Broken Lizard whore, I am greatly looking forward to it.
As many of you may already be aware, Broken Lizard is partcipating in a Beerfest National Tour (www.brokenlizard.com), both screening the upcoming movie and then heading to local bars and participating in drinking games. I am glad to say I attended both in Washington, DC on Aug 7th. I have my review of the movie below but first as an FYI - the bar party was fun and Erik and Steve from Broken Lizard destroyed two local radio people in back-to-back games of beer pong. I'm sure the AICN event will be a blast as well.
To give you a sense on my thoughts on Broken Lizard is that Super Troopers is a very funny movie and is quite understandably a cult classic. To date, it is the one Broken Lizard DVD absolutely worth owning. I'm not a Club Dredd hater. It was a fair attempt at mocking horror movies but it fell short on laughs for me. Dukes of Hazzard is pretty awful but nobody considers it a true Broken Lizard film. Puddle Cruiser is a waste of anyone's time.
So where does BEERFEST end up? I'm glad to say, right at the top. Super Troopers will still be everyone's favorite, and rightfully so, but Beerfest will have you laughing more! It should be obvious but I'll say it anyways, this movie is not for the sophisticated crowd, it's for the Van Wilder/Old School/'R' Rated drinking comedies crowd. Two things that are important to note right away are (1) the movie does not waste time on any romantic subplots so the laughs can keep coming and (2) after watching this movie you will be craving a Beer more than ever.
M.C. Gainey ("LOST", Con Air) and Donald Sutherland both have cameos at the beginning of the film. Sutherland is especially hilarious as the grandfather of Todd and Jan Wolfhouse (Erik Stolhanske and Paul Soter), two brothers who travel to Germany to spread his ashes at Oktoberfest. Almost the whole time the two are at Oktoberfest, the laughs keep coming. The entire sequence alone has everything you would ask for out of a 'R' rated comedy. They then come upon the secret, underground "real drinkers" part of Oktoberfest, BEERFEST (of course), where they get embarrassed by the German team (that includes Will Forte in hilarious form). The majority of the movie follows a Dodgeball-esque plotline and puts the brothers back in America to form an "all-star" drinking team (enter the rest of the Broken Lizard guys) and train to beat the Germans at Beerfest one year later. Instead of dodging wrenches and playing girl scouts, training includes drinking kegs, bar tricks, crashing college parties, and more. The movie's climax is of course back at Beerfest for a full competition one year later which plays out with extreme versions of all your major drinking games as the countries wind down to the final match between our villains and heroes.
Beerfest could be better in places as some jokes fall flat (monkey-frogs?) and there is a beer goggles sequence that runs a little long, but for the most part this movie will have you laughing. Is it stupid drunken humor? Yup! Does it stretch any form a believeability? Definitely. But in a summer void of 'R' rated hits like Wedding Crashers, this is the one the college crowds are going to eat up. Broken Lizard fans and anyone who's played stupid college drinking games will love it.
I need a *plethora* of beers just talking about it. I'm out.
-El Guapo
